


Season for Dreaming

by phoenixflight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, John Finds Out, Love, M/M, Pre-Series, Stanford, Teenchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 08:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21317068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/pseuds/phoenixflight
Summary: In the end, his college essay began,I was raised to join the family business.When Sam was in fourth and fifth grade, he had written the same essay six times at half a dozen different elementary schools from Arkansas to Oregon.My hero is my brother Dean because…The essay had changed in the last decade, but only in the details.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 21
Kudos: 182





	Season for Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Guilty Ones, from the Spring Awakening soundtrack. "Now our bodies are the guilty ones...this is the season for dreaming...wake me in time to be out in the cold."   
Sam is 17 and 18 over the course of this fic but there are references to sexual activity between the boys before Sam was old enough to orgasm.

The summer before Sam’s senior year of high school, he felt like his head broke the water and he was catching his breath. The awkward growth spurt which had possessed his limbs for the last eighteen months had slowed down, leaving Sam no longer growing out of his jeans every six weeks. He was still skinny but standing a little taller than both Dean and John. For the first time since he was about thirteen and a half, he could make out with Dean for more than five minutes without being in danger of coming in his pants. His wild, omnidirectional mood swings of rage, hopelessness, and bitterness were calming into a clear, articulate anger with John, John’s priorities, John’s alcoholism, and the life John had dragged them into. 

Also, Sam had a plan. 

He had spent the last eight weeks of his junior year at a school in the suburbs of Chicago. It wasn’t a wealthy neighborhood or anything, but it wasn’t like the small towns where they often stayed, where most of the kids were going into trade apprenticeships or to get AA degrees at the local community college. All anyone was talking about toward the end of the school year was who was throwing pool parties, who was going to get laid, and where people were going on college visits over the summer. 

Only one of those things mattered to Sam. 

Sam wasn’t exactly going on a multi-state college tour with his doting parents, but there wasn’t a corner of the lower forty-eight that he hadn’t seen in his life, and he had a pretty good sense of where he wanted to start his new life. Nowhere that got below 0 in the winter or above 110 in the summer. Nowhere on I-90 or I-70 or any of the other familiar and much-traveled highways of Sam’s childhood. Nowhere in the south - too many ghosts and things that fed on old grief. Ditto the northeast with its colonial churches and overfull graveyards, which nixed a bunch of the Ivy Leagues immediately. Sam had a short list. 

“You need to stop?” Dean asked, over the blaring of the radio, as a rest stop sign flew past at the side of the road. 

Sam started to shake his head, and then changed his mind. “Sure.” They were driving through the arid New Mexico hills, from a simple salt and burn in Taos toward Flagstaff where they were meeting John, late August sun beating down. That was another reason this summer had felt like surfacing from a strong current - Sam and Dean had spent it mostly on their own. 

They had bounced across the country on easy hunts, wasting baddies, hustling pool, and crashing together in motel beds - and in truck stops when they couldn’t wait. Sam had barely even complained about John ordering them around like toy soldiers, because it meant so much uninterrupted time with Dean. 

Instead of rushed, silent encounters with their dad passed out in the other room, fumbling in the dark under the sheets or fully dressed in gas station bathrooms, they had been able to take their time over and over. They kissed in daylight, slept in the same bed, and woke tangled with each. They’d been fooling around since before Sam could come, but this year had been the first time Sam really felt like they were… lovers. Not that he’d ever say it to Dean. He didn’t need to give his brother any more reasons to call him a girl.

It made it hurt even more whenever he thought about the SAT scores hidden in the bottom of his duffel bag. But his dad had trained him from birth to push through pain. Sam still had another year with Dean, and he had things to do in the meantime. 

First on the list was blowing his brother. They would be in Arizona in five hours and school would be starting soon. This rest stop might be one of their last opportunities to get off together without questions or excuses, until they had settled at a new school and dad had ditched them again finally. 

Sam went to his knees on the dirty concrete in the single occupancy bathroom and Dean sighed, sliding his fingers into Sam’s hair. Dean’s dick was already starting to thicken against his zipper and Sam’s mouth was watering. 

“Fuck, baby boy,” Dean sighed, fingers cupping Sam’s cheek as Sam pulled out his dick and licked the slit. “Jesus, fuck.” 

Pressing the heel of his hand against his own hard-on, Sam swallowed him down.

“Look so fucking good like that. Made to take my cock, weren’t you, baby brother?”

Sam groaned, cock throbbing in his jeans. Dean’s eyes were dark, beautiful lips wet from kissing. Dean could dirty talk Sam to an orgasm in the middle of a hunt in a graveyard if he wanted. He swallowed around Dean’s dick, nose pressed to the wiry hairs at the base, breathing in the overpowering smell of home. Dean’s groan echoed off the tiles. 

After Dean came down Sam’s throat he dragged Sam up to lick his own come out of his brother’s mouth, and pulled open his pants to return the favor with two fingers inside Sam; always trying to one-up him, but two could play at that game. Sam got his hand back on Dean’s cock - half hard and still slick with spit - and their quick pit stop turned into thirty minutes with Sam’s pants around his ankles and his hands braced on the tile wall as Dean fucked him hard from behind. 

It turned out John had wind of a werewolf in the Rockies but wanted to check out a haunted mine in Nevada before the next lunar cycle. By the time they’d settled in a little town outside of Boulder, school had already started. A year ago, Sam would have started a screaming match about that, but instead he just took his birth certificate, his enormous three-ring binder of old school records, and equally hodge podge immunization records to the office of Bennett High School and enrolled himself. 

His English class was already working on college application letters. “Even if you aren’t planning on going,” said Mr. Harson, pushing his glasses up his nose, “It’s an excellent exercise in expository writing and self reflection.” 

Be unique but sincere. Write the story no one else can tell - that’s the advice everyone gave. 

Sam, sitting at the scratched formica dining table in the shitty trailer they were renting, watched his brother’s ass as Dean stood at the stove heating soup, and bit his pencil to keep from laughing. 

_ College is important to me because I’m in love with my brother who raised me, and I think I’ll go insane if I have to keep watching our father drive him into an early grave, _ Sam thought. It certainly counted as a bold opening statement. 

Mr. Harson had also said that college essays were a chance to explain any discrepancies or irregularities about one’s transcript. _ I grew up on the road, hunting the creature that killed my mother. I learned perseverance which I know will help me succeed in college… _

By the time Dean put a steaming bowl of Chef Boyardee in front of him, Sam’s page was still blank and the end of his pencil was chewed to a mangled mess. “How’s that oral fixation working out for you, Sammy?” Dean smirked.

Sam sucked the pencil deliberately into his mouth, and then made a face and spat out flakes of yellow paint as Dean laughed. 

It made Sam’s chest warm to hear Dean laugh like that, big and free like he had over the summer. Since they’d been back with John, Dean had turned into the good soldier that Sam hated, yessir and nosir, morning drills, tired from night shifts as a gas station attendant and the short hunts that John dragged him on while Sam was in school. Not that John had to drag him - Dean liked hunting, and that was even worse. Sam liked killing evil things too, but it wasn’t his identity, his source of pride and purpose in life. Sam knew what happened to men who made hunting their sole, blinding purpose - he’d grown up with one. He couldn’t watch Dean fade into the same kind of bitter, lonely drifter as John, driven by bloody deaths, corpse smoke, and Jack Daniels. Sam was getting out. 

He looked back at the blank notebook with a frown. 

“Hey, you look like you’re trying to set that homework on fire with your bitchface,” Dean said, pointing a spoon at him. “You wanna go for a drive after dinner, take your mind off it?” 

Sam swallowed, throat tight. “Yeah. Yeah. That’d be great.” 

“We’re going out,” Dean yelled into the other room after Sam had dumped the dishes in the sink. Their father just grunted over the sound of the TV. They drove up into the mountains, and Dean parked in a truck pull-out at the side of the winding highway. Brilliant stars peeked through ragged wisps of cloud, but neither of them were looking. Sam had the steering wheel jammed into his ribs and the gearshift knocking against his knee, but he had Dean’s dick in his hand and his tongue in his mouth. 

Afterward, they did look at the stars for a while, Dean’s arms slung around his shoulders, keeping him warm in the cold mountain night.  _ I’m going to college to learn to be on my own, because I’m afraid I will never be whole without him.  _ Sam turned his face to the side, tucking his nose in the collar of Dean’s leather jacket, and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. 

Sam was making lunch-friends. That’s what he called whatever group of accepting students welcomed him at their lunch table. Most often it was outcasts of some flavor - nerds, geeks, or punks. Occasionally in the last year and a half as Sam had grown, it had been jocks who saw his size and invited him into their exclusive circles. 

Sam had gotten good at making lunch-friends practically instantly. He wondered if that made up for the fact that the only  _ lasting  _ friendship in his life was his brother whose dick he sucked whenever he had the chance. 

He was in the library during study hall with Mandy, one of the lunch friends who shared his English class, when she asked, “What are you writing your college essay about?” 

“I don’t know yet,” Sam lied. 

Mandy giggled. “Sam, it’s due Friday.”

“I know. What’s yours about?” 

“About me finally convincing my dad to teach me to hunt.” Sam startled a little, and she interpreted his widening eyes as interest. “My family are big into hunting but only the guys. My dad was real strict that girls should stay home. We fought and fought about it and finally I convinced him to start teaching me to shoot. Now I go with him and my brothers on hunting trips. I got my first buck last summer.” She smiled, shy and proud, and Sam felt a lurch in his stomach remembering Dean after his first kill. “My essay is about perseverance in the face of inequality.” 

“That sounds good,” Sam said faintly. “Good theme.” 

“Thanks.” She flipped a page in her notebook. “Are you planning to actually apply anywhere?” 

“I think I am.” 

She giggled again. “Better get working on that essay then.” 

In the end, his college essay began,  _ I was raised to join the family business.  _

Ironically enough, it was a twisted version of the tall tale they had spun to temporary friends, schools, CPS workers, and nosey hotel managers for their entire lives. His ex-military dad travelled around the country with his kids in tow, doing odd jobs that often took him away from home. His big brother was looking after him. Just for a while. They were okay, really. No, really. 

For audiences that required more melodrama, like a college admissions board, there was the version that alluded to PTSD, paranoia, alcoholism, and the struggles of a boy to look after his little brother when he was still a child himself. 

When Sam was in fourth and fifth grade, he had written the same essay six times at half a dozen different elementary schools from Arkansas to Oregon.  _ My hero is my brother Dean because…  _

The essay had changed in the last decade, but only in the details. 

“This is very moving, Sam,” Mr. Harson said when he handed the papers back at the end of September. “I hope you’re planning to use it.” 

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I am.” 

He told Dean he’d joined a study group, and stayed after school to fill out applications in the counselor’s office. She was sympathetic when he explained that his dad had other expectations for him. “It’s much more common than you’d imagine,” she said, and gave him a candy bar from her desk. 

Most of his classmates who were applying were stressed as the November and December deadlines approached, but Sam was almost finished with his five thick packets of paperwork. “I don’t know how you’re so far ahead,” Carson complained at lunch, over a tray of sloppy joes. 

Sam shrugged and didn’t mention that the chemistry they were doing in science had been covered in two of his eleventh grade classes last year, and that he’d read their current English assignment, the Odyssey, three different times, in two translations, during 9th grade. He’d been able to devote far more time and attention to his applications than his classmates. 

“Sam’s just good at everything,” Mandy said, smiling at him across the lunch table. It was slowly dawning on Sam that Mandy had a crush on him. He hoped if he ignored it, it would go away. 

The afternoon he mailed his applications, Sam stopped by the post office after school, dropped the manilla envelopes in the blue drop box, and walked another block toward their trailer before he had to duck behind someone’s decorative hedge to dry heave. 

At home, he wordlessly dragged his brother into their bedroom, shut the door, and pushed him down on the bed. 

“Sam, dad could be home any minute!” Dean protested, but Sam didn’t try to kiss him or undress him, just shoved his face into Dean’s chest and hung on. 

“Are you okay? Hey. Hey, Sam?” Dean’s hands were tugging at him but he resisted, burrowing closer into the skin-warm cotton of Dean’s shirt “Sammy? What’s wrong?” 

“Stomach ache,” Sam muttered, and it wasn’t entirely a lie, except for the fact that it totally was. 

After Sam had refused ginger ale and Pepto-Bismol, Dean gave in and let Sam hold him, one arm across his shoulders rubbing soothing circles on his back. Sam had never mastered the art of crying silently, and huge heaving sobs probably couldn’t be explained away as food poisoning, so Sam didn’t cry. He breathed slow and deep, eyes gritty and throat tight, and clung to his brother for as long as Dean would let him. Even when dad came banging home, later than expected, Dean just exchanged a few words with him through the door, and stayed right there on the bed with Sam as evening fell outside the window and the room was swallowed by blue darkness. Sam wanted to stay like that forever. 

John had always thought that school breaks were an excellent excuse to move, so predictably in December he dragged them halfway across the country to Nowhere, Appalachia. He was actually with them for Christmas that year, which would have meant the world to Sam at eight, ten, or even twelve but since he had been planning to give Dean his Christmas present in bed, having their dad around was less than thrilling. 

The new school, when it started in January, was large for the size of the town, although that wasn’t saying much, because it also served four other tiny ghost towns in the county. The other seniors there were subtly but deeply divided between the rowdy, resigned ones who were walking open-eyed into a future of grocery store clerking and fast food service in an area sucked dry by the collapse of coal; and the fervent, focused ones who were hellbent on getting out. Sam recognized some of his own desperation reflected in their eyes. For once he hardly kicked up a fuss when they moved on after six weeks. 

“You should get your GED,” Sam said casually in February, toes tucked under Dean’s thigh on the sagging couch in their latest rental. Or possibly a squat, the place was certainly dumpy enough. 

“Why would I do that?” Dean asked, arms stretched out on the back of the cushion, not looking away from the grainy sitcom on the TV screen. 

“Oh, I don't know. So your brain doesn't atrophy?”

“Bitch.”

Dean aimed a half hearted punch at his ribs which Sam dodged, lurching backward against the arm of the couch. “It's just going to get harder the further you get from school. You’ll start forgetting stuff, and what if you want to have a degree someday?” 

“What would I need a degree for?”

“I don't know,” Sam said, heavy with sarcasm, “in case you ever want to do anything other than hunting?” 

Dean’s brows drew down, and he glanced away from the TV. This was familiar ground - familiar ground that they were good at avoiding. “Why would I want to do anything else?” he asked, deceptively light. “Wasting monsters, saving lives. I’m not about to give up my gig as a real life superhero.” 

Sam rolled his eyes. “That line hasn’t worked on me since I was twelve. I just think you should keep your options open.” 

“Yeah? You know what’s worked instead since you were about twelve?” Dean lunged at him, and pinned him easily against the worn, stained cushions. Sam’s new height was no advantage fighting from a sitting position. Dean shoved a hand down his pants, and Sam let himself be distracted. 

He brought it up again in the middle of March. Everything was starting to feel urgent. He was checking the phone every morning and every afternoon, waiting for a call from Bobby, whose address had been on the applications. 

Sam was at a school in Pennsylvania, and Dean and John had just gotten back from a two week excursion that left Dean with a split lip and pair of cracked ribs. “You could be doing something that doesn’t involve getting thrown into walls if you took your GED,” Sam said as he flipped eggs over easy. 

“Drop it,” Dean growled, hunched at the table like a gargoyle. 

“I’m just saying, now is the best time to do it, if you’re going to.” 

“Well I’m not!” Dean snapped. “Don’t need to take any more fucking tests. That’s why I dropped out of school in the first place, Jesus.” 

John shuffled into the kitchen and opened the fridge, pulling out a beer. “What are you boys fighting about now?” 

Sam, slid the eggs onto two plates, on top of reheated hashbrowns from the freezer. “Dad, don't you think Dean should get his GED?”

John looked suspicious at being enlisted for support by his younger son. “Hadn’t thought about it. What makes you say that?”

“Well he could probably get something better paying when he needs to pick up odd jobs. And you know stuff like car insurance is way cheaper if you have a diploma or GED.” John grunted which meant that Sam had made a good point. 

Dean was scowling furiously. 

“I'd help you study,” Sam said sweetly, and ducked as Dean threw a crumpled beer can at his head. 

“Dean,” John said, not sharp but firm, and Sam’s stomach clenched as Dean’s posture instantly changed. “It’s not a bad idea.” 

“Yessir,” Dean muttered, glaring at Sam as Sam slid breakfast in front of him. 

At school, a couple of his current lunch-friends had already started getting acceptances and denials. “I got fucking waitlisted for U Penn,” Tyler complained, mouth full of cafeteria pizza. 

Cindy shrugged. “Maybe you should have gone to summer school like Mr. Nolan said after you flunked math for the second year in a row.” 

“We can’t all suck dick for a grade,” Tyler shot back, and in the ensuing scuffle no one noticed Sam’s shoulders hunched up tight.

The phone rang on a Wednesday in April, after school. “Hey Bobby,” Dean said after he picked up, and Sam tried not to look like he was suddenly listening furiously. “Yeah, sure. Yeah, we got it, just like you said. Uh-huh. That’s what Dad thought. About six of them, I’d say. Ha, no, I won’t tell him you said so.” Dean glanced across the room at Sam who was pretending to be very engrossed in his calculus textbook. “Sure. Hey Sam. He wants to talk to you.” 

Sam gulped and banged his knees on the table as he got up, stumbling. Dean raised an eyebrow and held out the phone. “Hey Bobby,” Sam said, heart thundering. 

“Hey, Sam. Got some mail here that belongs to you.” 

“Yeah?” Sam asked, hearing the tremble in his own voice. 

“Yeah. UC Berkeley. Stanford. University of Washington. UCLA. Big fat envelopes. Want me to open them for you?” 

Sam breathed out. He was lightheaded. Dean was watching him closely. “Not right now. I’ll call back, okay?” 

“Sure. Take care, kid,” Bobby grunted. 

“Thanks, Bobby,” he managed, before the line clicked. 

“What was that about?” Dean asked. 

Sam swallowed, and was amazed that he managed to meet Dean’s eyes and speak calmly. “He was helping me with some translations of that text Dad got from the guy in Jacksonville.” 

“Did Dad ask you to do that?” 

Sam let his honest guilt show on his face. Dean snorted and turned away, suspicion assuaged. Sam breathed out and tried to stop his hands from shaking. 

He called Bobby from the school office the next morning, and leaned on the secretary’s desk to hold himself up as Bobby opened the envelopes and read the offers. Acceptances to all of them, and scholarship money. A full ride to Stanford. Sam felt like a poltergeist had just thrown him into a wall, winded and dizzy. 

He sat in the nurse’s office and hyperventilated for fifteen minutes, and then ditched school, and cried under the bleachers for an hour and a half, until he was so wrung out, dehydrated, and cold from the unkind Pennsylvania spring that he could barely move. If he went home splotchy-faced and shocky, Dean would have a fit, so instead Sam dragged himself to the local coffee shop, which was full of old people at 11 in the morning, and sat for another couple of hours, numb and grieving. 

It was hell to keep up the pretense that nothing had changed. Sam had told everyone at school that he was going into the family business, just in case any of the lunch friends mentioned his plans to a friend of a friend whose sister Dean happened to take on a date. Small towns were like that. While Lewis and Cindy and the others all talked about which offers they were going to accept and Annika, Liam, and Tyler talked about the military, Sam just shrugged and stayed silent. 

At home, Sam wanted to be with Dean every waking minute, and every sleeping one also. He alternately wanted to cling to Dean, kiss him, hold him tight, or take him by the shoulders and shake him, yell at him for not wanting anything more. 

More and more often now Dean was accompanying John on hunts, rather than being left with Sam. Sam’s resentment at John for periodically taking Dean away from him grew into a smoldering, constant fury. His time was ticking away, and he coveted it with the twitchy jealousy of an addict guarding a dwindling stash. 

Ever responsive to John’s orders, Dean was actually studying for the GED. 

“This is bullshit,” he muttered, hunched over one of the prep books Sam had brought from the library. 

The little brother in Sam wanted to say something bitchy like “So’s your future,” but he could be graceful in victory. “You’re doing great,” he said instead. 

Dean looked at him like he’d grown an extra head. 

“What? I’m being supportive.” 

“Yeah. Cut it out, or I’m gonna have to get the holy water.” 

“Jerk,” Sam snorted, and returned to his own homework.

The last school of Sam’s secondary education was outside Tallahassee, but it didn’t really matter. Sam walked across the stage, shook hands with the principal, and took his diploma. The school crest printed on it was as meaningless as any of the others over the years. It just happened to be the place in the game of musical chairs where the music stopped. 

Dean was in the audience. He’d actually refused to go on a hunt with John that weekend in order to be there. Sam could count on one hand the number of times that year Dean had defied their father outright. It had meant more than just an affirmation of his brother’s love. It was a little spark of hope, a crack in John’s iron control over his eldest son. 

When Dean hugged him, after the ceremony, they both pretended they weren’t tearing up. They skipped the party that Sam’s lunch friends were throwing and went for a long drive out to the coast. Sam felt as if he were breaking open the whole time, gradually, like something smashing in slow motion. 

Dean seemed to sense the gravity of the day, and they said little, sitting close together on the bench seat and holding hands as they walked along the pristine sand at Alligator Point. It was a rare east coast treat to watch the sunset over the water, and with Dean’s arm slung around his shoulder it was so sweet it ached. Helplessly, Sam turned his head and found Dean’s mouth seeking his. They fucked in the back seat of the car and again when they got back to the empty apartment. For 48 shining hours, the two of them did nothing but lie around naked in the muggy Florida heat, wrapped up in one another. 

John seemed pleased with his own genius the previous summer in doubling their hunting capacity while simultaneously getting his stubborn youngest out of his hair for long weeks at a time. To Sam’s exultation, John took the same tack again, even allowing them to find cases of their own instead of assigning them like a drill sergeant. 

The few times they did hunt all three together, Sam figured it was in his best interest to be as difficult as possible, so he made no effort to temper his bad moods and obstinacy. Dean’s narrow-eyed glares told Sam his big brother knew his game, but the separate hunting suited Dean too. Dean didn’t try to intervene. Another crack of disobedience. 

Hope and dread were growing equally in Sam that whole, sweet summer. Dread that he was about to lose this precious thing that made him whole, and hope that he might not have to. 

He threw everything he had into making Dean his. Any open critiques of John were harshly shut down, so instead Sam wooed his brother with pie from roadside diners, long blowjobs in the car, lazy morning sex, frantic late-night fucking, and minimal complaints about music. 

One hot, stifling night they pulled over beside a reservoir on a disused backroad in Georgia, climbed the fence, and went skinny dipping. Lying in the grass afterward, letting the sluggish breeze air-dry them, staring at the stars with Dean’s hand possessive and easy on his chest, Sam wondered if he was making the biggest mistake of his life. 

In late July, on their way to a hunt in Salem (“Fucking witches.” “Salem,  _ Oregon _ , Dean. And it’s not witches. Looks like ghouls.”) Sam said, “I looked up registration to take the GED test in Portland.” 

Dean’s head snapped around and he scowled. “Don’t think I don’t know what this whole GED thing is about.” 

Sam froze. “What?”

“You’re still trying to make me give up hunting. You’re living in a fantasy world where we could do something else.”

“We  _ can _ , Dean,” he began, voice cracking with urgency, but Dean snapped, “Enough, Sam. I’ll take the fucking test because Dad thinks it’s a good idea, but I don’t want to hear about this  _ you could do anything _ motivational speaker crap.” 

"I’m not trying to make you do anything,” Sam said in a small voice. “I just want you to have options.”

“Winchesters hunt,” Dean said firmly, eyes locked on the road ahead of them, and Sam felt panic well up in his throat. He clenched his fists on the edge of the creaking vinyl seats and tried to control the feeling of the only thing he loved spinning away from him, faster than the highway slipping by beneath the wheels. 

It was fitting that it all ended in Kansas, just like it had begun. They met up with their dad in Russell Springs, near the Colorado border, where he was renting a tiny shack from an old friend. Move-in weekend at Stanford was in a week, and Sam had been in denial enough times in his life to recognize the signs. His heart beat so hard he felt nauseous every time he thought about it, so he wasn’t thinking about it. 

It wasn’t like he had any planning ahead to do. He’d been packing up his whole life and dragging it with him in a duffel bag since he was old enough to walk, and buying a bus ticket wasn’t exactly complicated. Other kids were probably frantically packing, buying whole new wardrobes, deciding what posters to take to the dorms and what to leave in their childhood rooms. Instead Sam was at the kitchen table while his brother cooked dinner on a portable camp stove, because the stove in the rental was broken, pretending everything was normal and fighting a panic attack. 

Earlier, their dad had said, “Got word of some suspicious maulings up toward Minneapolis. Creature of some kind. I figured we could all three take a look since we don’t know what we’re dealing with.” He’d shrugged on his jacket and added, “I won’t be out too late. We leave tomorrow.” 

Which meant that either Sam went to Minnesota with them and then turned around in six days, potentially leaving them in the middle of a hunt when they were counting on a third for back-up, or he made his announcement now. 

Dean plopped two grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of Campell’s chicken soup in front of him. 

Sam just stared at the food, trying not to tremble. 

“Whassamatter Sammy? You want me to cut off the crusts for you?” 

“I.” He stopped, throat clicking, and started again. “I need to talk to you.” 

Without looking up he could feel Dean pause and turn to him. Knew his brother better than anything in the world. 

“Is this the kind of talk about leaving dirty socks on the floor, or more like the ‘I’m pregnant’ kind of bombshell?” Dean’s words were light but his tone neutral, the way he talked to cops and unstable witnesses. Cautious and flat. Hearing it hurt deep beneath Sam’s sternum. 

“I’m not pregnant, Dean,” Sam said, unable to muster even a huff of laughter. He thought for a wild moment about holding a baby with his brother’s green eyes, about having Dean with him forever, doubling the bonds of family between them - like the twisted, daylight follow up to some of their filthiest lights-out dirty talk:  _ come inside me, Dean, knock me up.  _

Sam swallowed hard, fighting nausea. Have to do it fast, like setting a joint. “I’m going to college.” 

There was no answer and after a long moment, Sam risked a glance up. 

Dean was standing at the sink with his back to him, shoulders tense, hands braced on the edge of the counter. 

“Dean?” Sam asked, voice cracking. 

Dean cleared his throat. “Going… going where?” 

“Stanford,” Sam whispered. 

“California,” Dean said, and rubbed one hand across his mouth, the way he did when he was distracted. He turned, late summer sunlight through the window over the sink gilding his hair and making the freckles on his nose look gold. “Sammy, I know you’re smart enough for that but the money…” 

“I got a full ride,” Sam said. It still felt unreal. “I start next week.” 

Dean flinched, eyes widening. “You’re… next week? ...I… I didn't…"

"What?"

"...Forget it.” 

Sam was on his feet, lunch abandoned on the table, reaching for his brother. “Dean?” 

“Gimme a minute, Sam,” he snapped, shrugging Sam’s hands away. 

Sam felt as if he was cracking open. “I don’t want to live like this forever, I can’t. There’s so much more out there, I had to get out. I don’t want to leave you Dean, I’ve just got to get away, Dean, do you get it? Do you? I just can’t, I can’t anymore.” He knew he babbling, couldn’t stop. “I don’t want this life, I never asked for it. I can’t keep hunting and wondering if this is the one you don’t come home from. I don’t want to go but I have to. Dean? Are you okay?” 

Dean’s shoulders were hunched, turned away. “I’m proud of you, Sammy,” he said, voice hoarse. His fingers were curled white-knuckled on the edge of the sink. 

Sam’s heart was racing, flying. He squared his shoulders, standing behind his brother in the spill of gold sunlight. “Come with me.” 

Dean jolted, head coming up. “Sam…” 

“Please.” 

That made Dean turn, face twisted in pain. He was already shaking his head and the bottom dropped out of Sam’s stomach. “The hell would I do in California with you?”

“Anything, Dean! You’ve got your GED, I bet you could get a job at any auto shop in the country. Hell you could be a firefighter or an EMT. Still saving people.” It was a long-held and cherished fantasy. Speaking it out loud felt as vulnerable as voicing the most taboo sexual desires. 

“Told you,” Dean growled, “nothing for me but hunting. S’what I do.” 

“Then you could still hunt! We’d live together and you could go on trips. I could help you on weekends.” He was desperate, blood thundering with adrenaline and sick with the feeling of Dean slipping out of his grasp. 

“And leave Dad on his own?”

“Dean!”

“Sammy.” Dean’s voice cracked.

“Dean,” Sam pleaded, and his hands were on his brother’s shoulders, yanking on his flannel pulling him in, and Dean lifted his arms to hold Sam, pulling him close. “Dean, Dean.” 

“Sammy,” Dean whispered, breath hot against his lips, and then they were kissing, fierce and sloppy, clutching at one another. “God, Sammy.”

“Dean. Need you, god, always,” Sam panted between their mouths and Dean was mumbling back, “Yes, yes, all yours, always, baby boy, never forget that.” 

They fumbled urgently, hand sliding beneath layers of shirts, tugging at belt buckles. Tears were stinging Sam’s eyes. “Fuck me, Dean. Need you in me, right now.”

Staggering into the other room they tumbled onto the sagging couch together, pants around their ankles. They fucked with spit and two fingers to open Sam up, and the friction burn was perfect, a counterpoint to the burgeoning, frightening ache inside him. 

“Come with me, Dean, please come with me,” Sam begged, legs wrapped around his brother’s hips. 

Dean groaned. “Don’t Sam. Don’t ask me that. I can’t.” His hips slammed home and they both shuddered. 

“No, no, no, Dean,” Sam moaned. He was broken, cracked open right through the core, the thread of hope he’d been holding all summer turned into a gaping, black fissure, and he pressed closer to his brother trying to relieve the pain of impending separation.

“I’ve got you, baby,” Dean grunted, fingers digging into Sam’s hips hard enough to bruise. 

“I love you, I love you, please,” Sam choked over and over again into Dean’s chest as Dean fucked him. Tears and snot made Dean’s shirt damp where Sam had his face pressed against him. He clung to his brother and shook apart through an orgasm that felt like getting mauled by a werewolf, cheeks wet. 

Dean came with a choked noise and when he started to pull out Sam clutched at him with arms and legs. “Stay. Stay inside me. Please don't leave me.”

“You're the one who's fucking leaving, Sammy,” Dean grunted, his voice strangled, and Sam’s breath hitched on a sob.

Sam was so wrung out and tangled up in grief that he didn’t react to the sound of the trailer door creaking open. Dean tensed though, jerking up away from him abruptly, leaving Sam cold.

Then Sam heard their father’s voice hard and cold as midwest ice, and he landed back in reality with a nauseous jolt. “What the hell is this?”

Dean was half-standing with his mouth open, one knee on the couch, pants undone, hands in front of his crotch. Sam was still splayed out on the cushions, knees open, come glistening on his stomach and between his thighs, face hot and damp from crying. 

During more than half a decade of hiding their relationship successfully from their father, Sam had imagined this playing out many times, but all of the things he had thought of saying flew out of his head. He gaped stupidly, Dean equally tongue-tied. 

John slid one hand behind his back, and adrenaline jolted through Sam like a shock from a car battery. “What the fuck have you done with my son?” he growled, drawing the gun.

Sam jackknifed upright on the couch and Dean raised both hands helplessly. “Dad?” 

“Dad!” Sam yelled. 

“It’ll be okay Sam,” John said. “That’s not your brother.” Despite the flush on his cheeks his gun hand was steady. 

Understanding flooded Sam and he scrambled up off the couch, tripping over his own jeans. “Dad, don’t!” He flung himself in front of his brother, felt Dean grab him, trying to shift him out of the line of fire. 

“Sam, outta my way,” John snapped, gesturing with the gun. The safety was off but his finger wasn’t on the trigger yet. Meticulous, always, with his trigger finger. 

“No!” 

Dean was shaking his head. “No, Dad, you don’t understand.” 

“Goddammit, Sam,” John swore. “Get away from him!”

“No,” Sam repeated, hearing his voice crack. Dean was shaking, he could feel the tremor in Dean’s grip on his arm. 

“Get your fucking hands off my son,” John growled. “Where’s Dean?” 

“Dad, it’s me,” Dean pleaded. “I swear to god. Get the salt and the silver, any test you want, it’s me.” 

John’s jaw clenched, gun twitching just a little. “You think I’d believe that Dean would molest his little brother?” Dean flinched hard, freckles standing out on his white face. 

“He didn’t!” Sam shouted, feeling fresh tears pricking at his eyes. “He’d never hurt me, it’s my fault, I wanted it, I asked him for it. He’d never do something I didn’t want!” 

The alcohol flush and heat of anger was draining from John’s face leaving him almost as pale as Dean. “You don’t mean that, Sam. It’s made you think that, but your brother would never touch you like that.” 

“Maybe if we hadn’t been raised living out your stupid crusade,” Sam said, reckless and shattered. There was dark water dragging at him, an icy current that would drown him if he stopped fighting. He yanked his jeans up, drying come flaking off his stomach. “Maybe if you hadn’t left us together over and over, made us move so we could never make friends, maybe if we’d had anything but each other, it wouldn’t be like this but it  _ is _ .” He flung the last word at his father like a curse. His cheeks were wet, eyes burning. “It’s been like this forever and it’s not going to stop!” 

“Sam,” Dean said, low and urgent. 

A tendon popped in John’s neck. “Both of you, in the car. Put your goddamned pants on and get moving.” He kept the gun trained on them both. Dean fumbled with his belt.

Sam held his ground. “Why? So you can take us out into the mountains and shoot us?”

John ground his teeth. “I’m taking you to Bobby’s and putting you in his panic room until we sort out whatever the hell is wrong with both of you.” 

Squaring his shoulders, Sam gripped Dean’s wrist. “No. We’re not going anywhere with you.” 

“The hell you aren’t. You’re either monsters or my sons, and either way, you’ll do as your told or regret it.” 

“If Dean wants to keep marching to your orders I can’t stop him,” Sam said, voice shaking, nails digging into Dean’s skin. “But I’m done. I’m going to college.” 

John blinked, clearly thrown. “What?” 

“I’m leaving. And I’m not leaving Dean alone with you now.” He heard Dean draw a sharp breath. 

"That's not your decision to make, Sam," John said, but there was an uncertain furrow on his brow.

Sam tugged at Dean's elbow. “Come on, Dean. Do you really want to stay? Now?” 

“Sam,” Dean croaked, voice like shattered glass. His eyes were wide and wet, red-rimmed. 

“Sam, I’m not letting you walk out that door with what could be a monster,” John said. “You know better than that.” 

“See?” Sam said softly to Dean, and felt him shiver, feverish and sick. “C’mon. Get your bag.” 

“Boys,” their father said warningly. It was a tone that would have frozen Sam on the spot with terror at age 12, would have given him pause even at 16, but not today. 

He lifted his chin. “You’re going to have to shoot us both now or let us go. My brother and I are leaving.” 

John’s hand flexed on the gun, looking between their faces - Sam’s grim and determined, Dean’s shattered open and hurting. Slowly he lowered the gun. 

Sam nodded, once. “Bags, c’mon.” Dean didn’t move. “Okay, I’ll get it. Stay here. Don’t fucking try anything.” He cast an icy glance at his father, backing toward their shared bedroom without taking his eyes off John until the last moment. 

It took him less than sixty seconds to grab their things. His bag was already almost packed, and Dean could replace most of what was going to get left. Sam grabbed Dean’s knife from under the pillow and his favorite flannel off the floor, and hustled back to the living room with two duffel bags. Most of the weapons were in the Impala and the keys were in Dean’s pocket. 

He caught a few words as he entered the living room. “...definitely is Sam,” his dad was saying. “And I s’ppose it’s really you. You oughta be ashamed of yourself, Dean.” 

“Yessir,” Dean said, barely audible. 

Glaring at John, Sam slid up beside his brother. “Dean,” Sam said, tugging gently at his arm. “Let’s go.” This time, Dean let himself be steered. Their untouched dinner was congealing in the kitchen, the Impala was gleaming in the late summer sun out front. Their father stood, hunched in the center of the room beside the sagging couch, gun held loosely by his side. 

“Sam. Dean. If you walk out that door, don’t ever expect to come back. Either of you.” Sam felt Dean tense beside him, and stiffened himself, ready to turn back for a fight, dig in his heels. But after the slight hesitation in Dean’s step, he just kept walking, across the creaking porch and down the steps. His motions were stiff and jerky but he was moving. 

Sam breathed out, shaking with adrenaline, and followed him, not bothering with a parting shot. Nothing was important except Dean’s hands on the Impala, Dean opening the door, tossing his bag inside. Sam felt like he had the first time Dean had kissed him - like he could feel the expansion of the universe resonating in his bones. 

Dean fumbled the keys twice, movements clumsy and shocky, so Sam ended up behind the wheel. There was a bubbling, hectic energy under his breast bone as he turned onto Route 40 westbound and accelerated. It was really happening, as real as the asphalt beneath the Impala’s tires. 

He had what he wanted most in the world - Dean in the passenger seat beside him and a future ahead of them. But the devastated slump of Dean’s shoulders sucked all the sweetness out of the victory. Sam kept casting anxious glances over at him, but his brother was turned away from him. His eyes were closed but Sam could tell he was faking. 

Tightening his hands on the wheel, Sam turned his gaze back to the road as the miles rolled away and the Rockies rose on the horizon to the west. Dean was hurting but he would be okay. He felt it with a jittery, nervous certainty in his belly, a conviction born of desperation. Sam would be enough for him. He had to be. Dean had always been enough for Sam. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!  
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